The frigid water slammed the prisoner against the stone wall and held him there like it was made of Velcro. That is until the prison guard turned off the fire hose and watched him fall to the floor.
‘¡Hola, Señor Payne! ¡Buenos días!’
‘Buenos días, my ass.’ He had been locked in a cell since Friday, and this was the third morning in a row that they’d used the hose to wake him up.
‘What is wrong?’ the guard asked with a thick accent. ‘Not happy to see me, eh?’
Jonathon Payne climbed off the floor and stretched his six foot four frame. He was in good shape for his mid-thirties, yet all the training in the world couldn’t stop the years from adding up. Throw in some old gunshot wounds and a few football injuries, and getting out of bed was his least favorite part of the day. ‘Oh, it’s not you. I love seeing your two teeth every morning. The thing I can do without is your wake-up call. I go to sleep in Spain and wake up in Niagara Falls.’
The guard shook his head. He was slight of build and ten inches shorter than Payne, but the thick iron bars gave the guard courage. ‘Just like a spoiled American. I go out of my way to shower you in bed and you do nothing but complain. Tomorrow I might skip the hose and wake you with my bullwhip.’
‘Damn, Ricardo. You’re one kinky cop.’
‘What you mean kinky?’
Payne ignored the question and walked to the front of the cell. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but your boss promised me a phone call today. That means the embassy will be here long before you show me your bullwhip and matching leather thong.’
‘Yes, I sure they will drop everything to save you and your friend.’ The guard laughed as he walked down the corridor. Pointing to another inmate, he said, ‘Hey, hombre! You an americano, no?’
‘Me?’ the prisoner asked with a twang. ‘Yes, sirree. I’m from Bullcock, Texas.’
‘And why are you in jail?’
The man blushed slightly. ‘I was caught whizzin’ on one of your streets.’
‘That is right! The Pisser of Pamplona! How I forget about you?’ Laughing harder, the guard pointed toward the man’s crotch. ‘And how long have you and your little señor been in here?’
‘About two weeks.’
‘For pissing in public?’ Payne growled. ‘And the embassy hasn’t helped you yet?’
‘I’m still waiting for ’em to show. They’re down in Madrid, and we’re way up here in Pamplona. I reckon they don’t come this way too often.’
‘Son of a bitch,’ Payne mumbled. He had assumed that he and his best friend, David Jones, would be given their release once the weekend was over. Or, at the very least, someone would explain why they’d been arrested. But his confidence was slowly waning. If the Texan was correct, Payne realized he might have to do something drastic to get out, because there was no way in hell he’d rot in a cell for much longer. Especially since he didn’t do anything wrong.
Three days in jail and still no charges. Three goddamned days.
It had started last week. They were in Pamplona for the Fiesta de San Fermin, better known as the Running of the Bulls. They’d been in town for a couple of days, drinking and sightseeing, when they were ambushed at their hotel. Completely overwhelmed by a surprise attack.
Payne was getting cleaned up for dinner when someone kicked in his door. The local cops. A lot of them. They were there en masse to arrest his ass. They kept mumbling in broken English about something he’d done long ago. Way before his recent trip. None of it made any sense until he glanced down the hall and saw Jones in handcuffs, too. That’s when he realized this must have something to do with their former careers. Their military careers. And if that was the case, then they were screwed. This would become an international incident.
The duo used to run the MANIACs, an elite counterinsurgency team comprised of the best soldiers that the Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard could find. Whether it was personnel recovery, unconventional warfare, counterguerilla sabotage, or foreign defense, they’d seen more shit than a proctologist. And caused their share of it, too. Clandestine operations all over the globe. Missions that no one else could handle. Or be entrusted with. When they got an assignment, it came straight from the top brass. Right from the Pentagon. And the reason was simple: the less people who knew about the MANIACs, the better. They were the government’s secret weapon. The boogeymen the U.S. wouldn’t admit to. Couldn’t admit to.
And that’s what had Payne worried. If he’d been arrested for something he’d done with the MANIACs, would the Pentagon come to his aid? Could they afford the negative publicity?
So far it had been three days and still no word.
Three days and counting…
3
Orvieto, Italy
(sixty-two miles northwest of Rome)
Dr Charles Boyd dropped his hammer and searched for his canteen. He was in decent shape for a fifty-eight-year-old, but the heat from the floodlights was brutal. Sweat poured off his scalp like rain.
‘Good heavens!’ he complained.
Maria Pelati smiled but kept working. She was half her professor’s age and possessed twice the energy. And while he suffered in the traditional garb of an archaeologist – khaki pants, cotton shirt, hiking shoes – she wore a T-shirt and shorts.
They’d spent the past few days together burrowing into the 900-foot plateau that lifted Orvieto high above the vineyards of the Paglia Valley, a location so impenetrable that it was used as a safe haven by the popes of the Middle Ages. Papal documents prove that the Italian popes transformed Orvieto into the vacation Vatican, their home away from home during the most tumultuous era in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Sadly, papal scribes were banned from describing any specifics for fear that their descriptions could be used by their enemies to plan an attack. Still, that didn’t stop rumors from spreading.
According to legend there was supposed to be a city built underneath the city – the Catacombs of Orvieto – which was used to store the Church’s most important documents and protect its most precious artifacts. Most experts dismissed the Catacombs as a fairy tale, the creation of a drunk monk from the fourteenth century. But not Dr Boyd. Not only did he believe in their existence, he used all of his free time to search for them.
‘Professore? When I was little, my father used to speak of the Catacombs, though he never talked about them in real terms. He always considered them to be like Atlantis.’ Pelati took a deep breath and brushed the hair out of her eyes, something she did when she was nervous. ‘Well, sir, I was wondering, why are you sure that the Catacombs exist?’
He held her gaze for several seconds, then eased the tension with a half smile. ‘Trust me, my dear, you aren’t the first person to question me. I mean, who in their right mind would waste their time searching for the Catacombs? I might as well be fishing for the Loch Ness Monster.’
She laughed. ‘Just so you know, it’s probably cooler near Loch Ness.’
‘And just so you know, I’m not the least bit crazy.’
‘I never said that you were.’
‘But you’ve considered it. You’d be crazy if you didn’t.’
She brushed the hair out of her eyes again. ‘There’s a very fine line between genius and insanity, and I’ve never seen you cross that line… Of course, you are rather elusive. You still haven’t told me about the Catacombs yet.’
‘Ah, yes, the Catacombs. Tell me, my dear, what do you know about the Roman Empire?’
‘The Roman Empire?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘I know quite a bit, I guess.’
Without saying another word, he handed her a series of documents from his fanny pack, then took a seat in the shadows of the rear wall, waiting for the reaction that he knew would come. ‘Santa Maria!’ she shrieked. ‘This is Roman!’
‘Hence my question about the Empire. I thought I made that rather clear?’
Pelati shook her head, then returned her attention to the documents. At first glance they seemed to illustrate an elaborate system of tunnels that were hidden underneath the streets of Orvieto, yet it wasn’t the maps or the illustrations that perplexed her but rather the language itself. The document was handwritten in a form of Latin that she was unable to translate.
‘Is this authentic?’ she demanded.
‘That depends on your perspective. You’re holding a photocopy of a scroll that I found in England. The photocopy is obviously fake. The original is quite real.’
‘In England? You found the scroll in England?’
‘Why is that so surprising? Julius Caesar spent some time there. So did Emperor Claudius.’